


Level Up

by Jen425



Series: Enter the Game [2]
Category: Kamen Rider - All Media Types, Kamen Rider Ex-Aid, Tokusatsu
Genre: Gen, Houjou Emu Needs A Hug, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Mentors, POV Second Person, Pre-Canon, Tagging Parado cause the M half of Emu is more present this time, honestly on the fluffy side
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-30
Updated: 2020-05-30
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:53:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24452413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jen425/pseuds/Jen425
Summary: “Why are you a doctor?”
Relationships: Hinata Kyoutarou & Houjou Emu
Series: Enter the Game [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1766104
Comments: 10
Kudos: 30





	Level Up

**Author's Note:**

> Just finished a group rewatch with some friends and I had a Feel.
> 
> So I dug this up from my drafts.

Here’s a few things you learn about Hojo Emu over the next few weeks: he has two sides of him, one angry or excitable but always loud, the one who smirked at the screen when you see him playing games, one softer and hurt and so inquisitive about what it’s like being a doctor? How do you become a doctor? Is it nice to help people?

Both have smiles, the first’s smile a wide and sparking thing as it faces the screen and the second’s small and almost confused with its own existence.

Sometimes the two halves merge, and it muddled the duality.

(Other times, when he thinks no one’s looking, he sharpens the duality by talking to his other half.)

He loves games, of course, but he’s also good at them. Because it’s hard for him to make friends, since he moves so much, and his dad works so much, he’s mostly alone. So he plays.

His father has now visited all of once, and Emu had been so neutral on even that. You wonder, but there’s nothing concrete. The boy is lonely, yes, but he’s still old enough to be mostly self sufficient.

Still…

You’ve never been so protective of a patient before.

Not that you don’t care for each one (it’s an important lesson that some forget, the lesson that patients are people with lives). But Emu is special.

He’s also not supposed to be here, sitting calmly in a waiting room chair and playing a game on the handheld you had given him. Somehow not being noticed by anyone else, despite the hospital robes.

You don’t know why your eyes find him so quickly, maybe that this isn’t the first time he’s found you or one of his nurses outside of his room.

That’s another thing about him: he never cares much about rules unless he’s found a use for them, and his father’s… absence has made “because I said so” almost a foreign concept.

You take him back to his room and he goes with little complaint, as if the only true purpose was the attention.

(A part of you knows that it probably was.)

On the way back, he trips and you catch him.

“Careful,” you say. “You don’t want to stay here longer, do you?”

“Stay here longer?” Emu asks, and there shouldn’t almost be hope in his eyes at the thought. You stop and bend down in front of him.

“Listen to me,” you say. “A hospital is for people who are sick or injured, and a doctor’s job is to help them heal. We want you to be healthy.”

“Oh,” Emu says, and his small face shows an internal war in himself before he asks. “Um… Doctor Hinata?”

“Yes?”

“Why are you a doctor?”

The answer is obvious, in this moment, especially which answer it is that this boy needs.

“I’m a Doctor,” you say, removing your hands from the boy’s shoulders but still kneeling at eye level. You’re glad no one is in this hall, for the moment. “Because I want to help people.”

“But… why?”

That… actually gives you pause, as Emu stares at you with the legitimate curiosity only a child possesses.

“Because it’s the right thing to do,” you eventually decide on saying. “Life is the most precious thing a person has, and doctors help people live them to the fullest.”

“Oh,” Emu says again, and then a large smile splits his face. “Doctors are heroes.”

You can’t help but smile.

“You could say that,” you reply. “Now, we do need to get you back to where you should be.”

Emu nods.

“Yes, Doctor Hinata,” he says, and then… “Thank you.”

You smile.

“Of course,” you say. “And I think you can call me Doctor Kyoutarou.”

A small, quiet smile.

“Okay, Doctor Kyoutarou.”

It’s unbearably cute.

But a child’s smile should never look so surprised by itself.

  
  
  


(Before he is eventually discharged, you give him your phone number, and your email address, too. You don’t know why, but he calls you often, and he sounds so excited when he does and you listen.

You’re more happy than you would like to acknowledge, to be able to give him an adult he can trust.)

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on Tumblr @flaim-ita or @dancingqueen-mai for just Toku


End file.
